Researchers have created a new material that overcomes two of the major obstacles to solar power: it absorbs all the energy contained in sunlight, and generates electrons in a way that makes them easier to capture.

At this point, the material is years from commercial development, but he added that this experiment provides a proof of concept -- that hybrid solar cell materials such as this one can offer unusual properties.

In a windowless workshop near the county landfill, a small Raleigh company has spent the past year trying to solve the nation's energy crisis one car at a time.

The result: A car that breaks a once-unimaginable fuel efficiency barrier and delivers 100 miles per gallon. The spare battery costs less than 75 cents to charge and gives the plug-in Prius about a 35-mile range solely on electric power, making gasoline optional on short commutes. Retrofitting Priuses has become a full-time occupation for the Advanced Vehicle Research Center.

More vehicles run on natural gas in Argentina than anywhere else in the world, and that success is attracting a burst of interest from the U.S., where a big push is under way to convert buses, taxis and cars to natural gas.

Representatives of American companies are flocking to Argentina to buy natural-gas compressors, conversion kits and fuel tanks to sell in the U.S., said Alessandro Carlo, president of Tomasetto Achille, a major Argentine maker of these products, based in Buenos Aires.

With oil prices off nearly 30 percent from their highs of almost $150 a barrel, OPEC oil ministers are considering what was unthinkable just a few weeks ago — cutting back output to prop up the price of crude.

Oil ministers insisted there was adequate supply to meet demand, and blamed speculators and a weak U.S. dollar for crude's stellar rise.

In a forecast last month, OPEC predicted that the world's forecast appetite for oil for this year overall will have fallen by 30,000 barrels a day and noted that world demand growth next year will be "the lowest since 2002."

TVNL Comment: The US criminal establishment media keep lying to you and telling you that demand has been an issue. They want you to think that drilling in Alaska will solve our problems. All along oil executives and OPEC chiefs have been saying that supply is not the problem. Yet our enemies in the media never tell you this.